When Fairy Tales & Nightmares Collide.

It has to be said when insanity comes out to play I embrace it with both arms and hold onto it like a long lost friend. I personally think sanity is over-rated anyway. Sometimes I actually miss my mania. When I was manic it made me feel more like me, I felt alive and unbreakable, ready to take on the world because I knew I could win. I could do anything and be anyone and no-one at all at the same time. Granted it makes you do messed up things and it’s blatantly obvious to the World around you that you’re a head case, but for the most part, it’s a pretty amazing high. But every coin has two sides and therefore mania must have its downsides. For starters it’s physically and emotionally exhausting and leaves you wondering why after so many sleepless nights, you have the sudden and seemingly life or death urge to rearrange the furniture, or sort your vast dvd collection into some bizarre order, or ransack your room looking for wage slips that you couldn’t give two hoots about only to get frustrated because you can’t find them all, even though a tiny part of you knows that you probably didn’t bother to collect them in the first place and that they’re sat in an office drawer somewhere collecting dust and you don’t really give a shit about them anyway remember? Completely pointless trivial tasks that you really couldn’t care less about on a normal day, and yet now they dash around your brain with such ferocity that you feel you may actually have a heart attack and die if you don’t do it this second. And then there’s the ridiculously risky stuff, like stealing your friends car and tearing round the streets in the middle of the night, thinking that you’re the best driver ever and should take up rally driving; when in reality you shouldn’t really be accelerating around corners and you definitely shouldn’t be driving with no licence, no insurance and a total of 20 minutes previous driving experience. Now I don’t need a lecture on the reckless stupidity and danger of my actions, because trust me, I know. There are so many what ifs in that situation alone that completely horrify me when I think of them, but it’s fair to say at the time, my judgement was severely impaired. That’s not an excuse, and it wouldn’t justify a single one of my ‘what ifs?’ it’s simply hindsight. Sure the mania always starts off quite nice and pretends to be your friend, elevating your mood, giving you bags of energy and enthusiasm and creativity. You start to see the world as though you’re looking through a kaleidoscope, everything is more colourful and beautiful and possible and you want to do it all, and you can because you don’t need sleep, you don’t need to waste time eating or having mundane conversations or doing bloody housework. Life is for living and tomorrow it could all be over, so you’ve got to cram as much into every day as you can. But you’re going too fast and no-one can keep up with you, it’s only a matter of time before you come off the rails completely, but still you keep shouting faster faster! You get frustrated at the people around you who are usually so much fun, they’ve started to become boring stick in the mud’s trying to talk you out of your fun and games, because they’re ‘tired’ or it’s ‘dangerous’ Ha! Screw them, there’s always a party happening somewhere, and with infinite confidence and charisma, you can gate crash them all! So you wade out on your own into a sea of strangers and countless dangerous encounters, but you’re flying too close to the sun and there’s no-one there to pull you back. Pretty soon you’re thinking you’re invincible to the point where you’re testing your mortality and actually trying to die, just to prove that you can’t. You’re so dangerously high now, you can’t even remember when you stopped being able to see the floor. It’s scary and confusing up here and you’re all alone. You’re angry at your friends for not coming with you, but you’re sad because you miss them. You’re having them time of your life, but you’re so thoroughly ashamed of what you did last, that you’ll tell yourself it didn’t happen. You’re still wide awake, but you’re deliriously tired. There’s so much more you need to do, but you don’t know where to start. You’re laughing. You’re crying. You’re dancing. You’re screaming. You’re completely lost and you can’t even remember half of what you’ve done, you just have this horrible feeling in the pit of your stomach like something’s terribly wrong, but you don’t know what. Then it happens, while you’re floating around wondering what’s next, you burn your wings and you fall helplessly back down to Earth so hard you’re sure you punctured the surface and landed in hell by mistake. You don’t even want to open your eyes, let alone get out of bed and every fibre of you seems to be screaming. You can’t get your head straight and you start to question your reality, did I really say that? Why is he so pissed off at me? I’d never have done that. Why is she ignoring me? How did I cut my knuckles up so badly? Who the hell is Rob? Why is my bank account empty? Memories drift through your mind like snapshots and slowly you put the pieces of the puzzle back together, but it must be wrong, that’s not you at all. You’re not brave enough or stupid enough to do those things, you’re not that selfish or conceited. In the end you can’t handle the shame of what you’ve done, so you block it out. If I pretend it didn’t happen for long enough, eventually I’ll forget it ever happened right? Maybe I was drugged? For 3 weeks straight... Maybe they’re all lying... Maybe it’s a conspiracy to mess with my head... Maybe I’m actually properly crazy? Nah they’re all ridiculous ideas! Draw a line under it and move on. Until next time.

I lived for so long with the dizzying highs and suicidal lows, slowly escalating over time, never realising that I was actually properly crazy. Now I’m diagnosed with bipolar and heavily medicated to stop me bouncing of the walls or jumping into traffic, and although having to down pills every day is depressing in itself, looking at what I would be like without them, and what I have been like, makes taking them a whole lot easier.

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Author

Hey, so I'm Khaos! I'm a twenty-something would be teenager with a compulsion for writing, doodling, music and general silliness. Oh and I have Bipolar, PTSD and mild OCD. This is my blog of rambling, rants and riots as I stumble through life with mental illness. I'm not very politically correct, I swear too much and I have all the tact of a brick to the face. Enjoy!